Thursday, 30 November 2017

November 2017 film review

CAMERAPERSON (Documentary) 2016 D- Kirsten Johnson
Kirsten Johnson is a highly respected documentary film maker who has stitched together moments from many of her films to make this extraordinary melange of her life’s work, which might be summarised as: people, and how they struggle with the adversities of their lives. We see civilians coping with the aftermath of the vicious inter-communal violence in the Balkans, a Nigerian midwife going about her daily work, and, perhaps most movingly of all, snatches of film of her mother, by now locked into a losing battle against Alzheimer’s.
           We see her standing still in a room, a look of complete befuddlement on her features as she perhaps wonders what she is doing there and what she is going to do next: maybe go and stand over there and do the same thing? The parallels with my own mother are frightening, but then many, many people around Britain and across the world will watch this footage and be thinking the same thing about their own relatives.
           A beautiful little film, full of the wit, joy and tragedy that makes up the human race.

BLADERUNNER 2049 (2017) D- DenisVilleneuve
It is 30 years on from the time Deckard was commissioned to off a band of renegade replicants and then walked off into the sunset with one of them. K (Ryan Gosling, who else?) is a replicant himself, hired to do the same job as his forebear. And when it is discovered that 2 replicants may have had a baby together, he is tasked with finding the offspring, and killing it.
Denis Villeneuve, like many of us, holds the original Bladerunner in such high regard he was initially reluctant to make a sequel. So when he eventually agreed to direct the movie, it turned out in many ways to be a tribute to Ridley Scott’s classic. Much of the feel of the movie takes us right back to the original; the cinematography, the music, the terse, spare dialogue. Of course by now Denis had about twenty times the budget to work with than did Ridley, and that shows clearly on the screen. But he never allows the special effects to overwhelm the plot, such a big temptation in modern blockbusters, and what emerges is a clever, intriguing plot which is extremely effectively told. And if they decide to make another sequel, another 30 years on, and if they put Villeneuve in charge again, I’ll pay good money to see it.

THE CRAFT (1996) D- Andrew Fleming
A high school student (RobinTunney), recently translocated to LA, notices she has powers of telekinesis. She is latched on to by a group of 3 fellow students who are interested in the black arts. She joins them, forces a brutish jock to fall hopelessly in love with her just for fun, and it all goes from there.
          Think Heathers meets the TV series Charmed and you begin to get a glimpse of this picture, which isn’t too hard because Tunney was brought in to replace Shannon Doherty in the latter. All the players work well together, especially Fairuz Balk who adds a special sense of alluring menace. Good fun, if not exactly earth-shattering.

THE DEATH OF STALIN (2017) W/D Armando Ionucci
It is 1953, and uber-tyrant Uncle Joe is at the height of his terrible powers in Soviet Russia- until he suddenly drops dead of a stroke. The other members of the Politburo vie with one another as to who will don the purple. Who will it be? Khrushchev (an, as usual, brilliant Steve Buscemi) seems a front runner, but never forget Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale), head of the KGB, a man who holds in his little safe blackmail evidence on all the others. Someone has to assume the reins of power, but whoever it is they’d better do it quickly. No one wants to be dumped in the Gulags or take a pistol-shot to the back of the head, just like all the other unfortunates they’ve been screwing for the last 30 years...
            I’ve been loving Armando since he co-wrote such classics as Alan Partridge, then went on to The Thick of It and most recently Veep. His ear for dialogue never fails him, neither does it in this fine adaptation of a French graphic novel. This film is both hilarious and terrifying at the same time, as we learn (hopefully not the first time) the lengths humans will go to in order to gain power.
Highly recommended.

November 2017 book review

Welcome to this month’s media review. This blog covers the 2 books I have read this month. Please see the next one for movies.

WILD SWANS, by Jung Chang
Being the life and times of a Chinese woman, born a year after me, that is in 1952, growing up in the brave new world of communist China, and her antecedents, her mother and grandmother, who lived in no less turbulent times in the earlier part of the 20th century.

In 1906, or thereabouts, following the death of the last Emperor, they tried to hold a democratic election in a province in north-east China. But it was so riven by vote rigging, vote buying and other corruption that it has been held in China ever since As the reason why democracy can never work in China. This even though it has worked, after a fashion, in India, which is also a vast, incredibly heavily populated and diverse country. Whatever. The fact is that Chinese people have only very rarely in their history been able to determine their own destiny. From the Imperial dynasties, through the ‘reign’ of ultra-capitalist Chang Kei-Shek, through to communism, the Chinese have had leaders imposed on them without their having any say in it.

This book, with its deceptively straightforward and chatty style, is actually a small masterpiece. Jung Chang draws us into the strange and terrible world of her forebears, and then her own, in a way that is totally convincing, and never less than gripping despite its considerable length. And it is the little things, the minutiae of people’s lives as much as the great political events, that make it such an absorbing piece of writing.

For me the most terrible stories come from her own life, beginning with ‘The Great Leap Forward’ in 1959, where beloved Charman Mao, he who could do no wrong, decided that the people were wasting their lives, and indeed China’s potential as a modern, industrialized nation, by growing rice. So he forced them to become a vast army of steelworkers instead. Only trouble with that brave attempt at modernization: who’s going to produce the food? Seems Mao didn’t think, or more likely didn’t care, about that, because millions died in the artificial famine that came about as a result. Nice one Mao. Then of course the Cultural Revolution, where basically everyone was encouraged to denounce everyone else as a bad commie, allowing millions of perfectly good communists to be reviled, beaten or even murdered. And both these movements, it turns out; the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution were not about political theory turned to action, but about consolidating his own power base. I trawled the internet to determine the many facts Jung Chang lays out in this book- they’re all accurate.

Now we can see that Mao has to stand with Hitler and Stalin as one of the great tyrants of the 20th, or indeed any other century. Conclusion: a stunning read.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A sophisticated young man develops a kind of pre-Neitschean philosophy which suggests certain superior individuals may construct their own moral code which may even sanction murder. Practising what he preaches, he goes out and does exactly that. Then his conscience begins to trouble him...

I first read this book when I was 19, and because it remains not only his greatest achievement, but one of his most approachable works, I enjoyed it hugely even then. But that was over 40 years ago, and when my wife re-read it, also after a long gap, I thought I might give it another go myself. Boy, am I ever glad I did.

Crime and Punishment became a sensation in Russia when came out at the end of the 1860s, and soon found an appreciative audience beyond Russia’s borders. It has now come to be seen as one of the greatest of all Russian novels, with its superb characterization and apparently simple (though tremendously subtle in fact) plot. Give it another 20 years, if I’m still around, and I’ll probably read it again.
A wonderful, life-changing book.

Monday, 27 November 2017

Death Lovers

Over the weekend an IS affiliate bombed a Sufi mosque in northern Sinai. Many people were blown to bits. And when the survivors ran out of the smoking ruins of the mosque, men flying the black flag of IS were waiting for them. Travelling in a small fleet of SUVs, they used automatic weapons to pick them off as they ran for shelter. As many as 300 were killed, with hundreds more seriously injured.

Earlier this year, the world was shocked when a lone bomber murdered 22 people and wounded hundreds of others at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. This atrocity, however was far, far worse.

It seems odd that Muslims would want to murder other Muslims, but that’s the way it is with IS. They were the wrong kind of Muslims, and anyone who doesn’t follow the extreme Wahabi doctrines of Islam as propounded by the Saudi clerics who inspire IS, is guilty of the sin of shirk, or idolatry. And the penalty for that is death. If you, dear reader, are not also an adept of Wahabi Islam, they want to kill you too.

In World War II, there was no negotiating with the Nazis or Japanese militarists. They were intent on world domination, and weren’t interested in anything else. As a consequence, they had to be crushed.
I suggest the same holds true with IS. Anyone who believes in freedom of expression and the freedom to practice whatever religion they please, or indeed does not choose to adhere to any religion at all, should accept that the only way to deal with IS is to destroy them. In the Middle East, where I understand their grip on power is being steadily eroded, in Europe and elsewhere, where their foot soldiers lurk in their hundreds or thousands, plotting to commit acts of terror against the idolaters, that’s you and me remember, they have to be obliterated. They believe when they die 72 houris, or celestial virgins are waiting in heaven to supply their every need. Let’s help them get there.

Wednesday, 15 November 2017

Freedom of speech to be made illegal in US? Surely shome mistake

I’m afraid not. Just as the UN is about to publish a list of companies operating out of Israel’s illegal settlements on the West Bank, 23 American states have already passed legislation outlawing any attempt to enact “BDS” (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) and call to account companies, such as Coca Cola, Hewlett-Packard, Ben and Jerries and many, many more. And now national legislation is being planned.

Whatever happened to freedom of expression in the Land of the Free? It doesn’t exist, apparently, when it comes to criticizing Israel.
“Companies working where they find it economically advantageous isn’t politics, it’s economics.”
That’s the argument deployed. But it’s naive. Deciding where you place your factories is intensely political, nowhere more so than this embattled land. Indeed, it’s impossible to separate politics from any act. In Friends of the Earth, we used to say: “Existence on planet Earth is a political act”.

Israel does whatever it can to peddle the lie that it gives the Palestinian people a fair deal, while behind the scenes it is doing whatever it can to intimidate, contain and basically crush them into cowed acceptance of their fate. I know. I’ve seen it work on the ground in the occupied territories. The zionists want the world to believe they are a band of terrorists, intent on murdering all the Jews the moment they get the opportunity. They punish an entire nation for the actions of a tiny minority. Yet when they turn away from violence and towards political action, as with the BDS campaign, that’s beyond the pale too.

Right now there’s a lot on the news agenda to keep us copied; Brexit, Trump’s latest antics, the fate of the Rohinja Muslims in Myanmar, and now the confusion in Zimbabwe. But’s let’s not forget the plight of the Palestinians. That’s what the Israelis want you to do.

Monday, 13 November 2017

The Wreckers

You know who the wreckers were. They would stand on coastlines during storms, luring ships to disaster by displaying false lights. They didn’t care how many sailors drowned: they were solely interested in the loot. Sometimes when sailors managed to get to shore without drowning, the wreckers would stove in their skulls, just to make sure there were no witnesses.

We have a new band of wreckers right now: the “no-dealers”, the hard Brexiteers. They don’t care how much damage they do to our country: they just want the loot, in this case power, power to have the sort of Britain they want: free of taxes, free of environmental controls, free of that irritating European Court of Justice.

You know who they are: IDS, Owen Paterson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Bill Cash, there are about 40 in all, but they are very powerful. But not powerful enough, they reckon. Oh yes, there’s Boris, of course, but he’s kind of in a class of his own. Remain, leave, he doesn’t really care either way; he just wants so desperately to climb to the top of the greasy pole, and now he’s even joined forces with former arch-enemy Michael Gove, the very man who tried to stab him in the back a few short months ago. They think they can do a Blair/Brown thing if they play their cards right. They sense Theresa’s weakness, and like a pack of wolves they are waiting for right time to pounce and rip her heart out.

In my opinion there shouldn’t have been a referendum in the first place, and I blame David Cameron for giving in to the wreckers and holding one. Right now I think the public, hopefully better informed this time, should be given a second chance to vote on whatever deal, or no deal, the government comes up with in March 2019. This time, perhaps, it won’t be “Christmas for racists” as Frankie Boyle so eloquently dubbed the first referendum, but a discussion about economic realities. If we just allow the politicians to have their way, we’re heading to becoming the poor man of Europe, where it will only be fun to live here if you’re rich.
STOP THEM! STOP THEM BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!